Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Monday November 15, 2010 @12:39PM
from the but-we-like-the-shiny dept.

CWmike writes "Columbia law professor Tim Wu, who coined the term 'net neutrality,' now says that Apple is the company that most endangers the freedom of the Internet. Wu recently published the book The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, in which he details what he calls 'information empires' such as AT&T, NBC, Facebook, and Google. He told The New York Times, 'It's largely a story of the American affection for information monopolists and the consequences of that fondness.' When asked whether the Internet could similarly be controlled by large companies, he told the Times: 'I know the Internet was designed to resist integration, designed to resist centralized control, and that design defeated firms like AOL and Time Warner. But firms today, like Apple, make it unclear if the Internet is something lasting or just another cycle.' Asked which companies he feared most, Wu replied: 'Right now, I'd have to say Apple.'" Wu has been in the news a bit lately.

Information is the new capital! It should be bought and sold on markets, it should have rates associated with it and Perato Law should be applied!

All hail the new information emporer -- he that knowth what is right and wrong by virtue of his vast information resources! We should herald our new turtlenecked emporer and congratulate him on his victory with abjection, not this slime written by a clearly Oriental socialist [amazon.com]!

Most like that they don't have to run anti-virus/malware programs on them.

It's only the belligerent technorati who insist that everyone should either acquire l33t expertise on every device they use, or be afraid of those devices and forced to enlist the aid of some smug expert.

So your political ideas on how to handle information should apply instead to the Internet, SeriouslyNoClue? Why not just let Internet alone, without trying to force anybody's view on how information has to be controlled, instead.

Honestly, people like you are scary. You are so angry and with so little perspective.

...because the fact that they have sufficient influence to push open standards indicates that they also have the power to do a lot of hypothetical bad things? like (I don't know) mass killing of puppies?

Is the solution to make sure that no entity ever has influence?

By your definition, things which are also bad:

1. Every company in the world.2. every popular organization ever in the history of mankind ever.3. all forms of functional government.4. all forms of media, including the internet and the printing press.5. anyone who has ever been modded +5